God Moves When...

John 5:7, “The sick man answered Him, “Sir, I have not man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I am coming, another steps down before me.”

I heard someone quoting Pat Robertson as he tired to answer why America does not experience miracles from God like third world countries do. He said, because the “people overseas didn’t go to Ivy League school… that we are too sophisticated… to skeptical…”

I would argue, particularly in light on the imminent availability of my book God Heals, that the reason we see less miracles in America is twofold. First is that God moves at the very end of ourselves. Miracles happen when there are no other human powered options available. Just like the sick man at the pool of Bethseda. He had no other options, he had no other help, and that is when God chose to move.

Just like the woman who had been hemorrhaging for twelve years in Matthew 9. She had suffered much, doctors had tried everything… she was at the absolute end of what man could do, and what she could bear. It was then she received her miracle.

Think of the Israelites at the Red Sea. When did the miracle occur? It occurred when they were out of options. Walls left and right, the Red Sea in front, the Egyptian army behind… God moved.

Those people in Africa, Central America, and other third world countries do not have the limitless abilities of America. They don’t have doctors to see, clean capable hospitals. They don’t have food pantries at their churches. They don’t even have transportation to get to them if they did. They live at the very end of themselves every day, and therefore God moves showing Himself real.

And this happens not just with healing. Leading us to the second misconception about God not doing as many miracles in America. We are distracted and blind to what God is doing miraculously. We do not see the murmuration, the act of God moving everything in our life to draw us closer to Him. We get offended by a church and blame God, when God allowed us to come to the end of that system, to the end of an individual interpretation so that we can find Him at the end of what man has created even though it has been created in His name.

We come to personal and corporate economic collapse so that we can discover and see God as the Provider. We come to unsolvable pressure so that Jesus can be seen as the Prince of Peace when we have lost any hope in ourselves.

In the end that is where faith is… at the very end of our human abilities. We try everything and either succeed, give up, or turn it over to God. In all cases, He still moves to work everything together for good. (Rom 8).